Fearfall
by effacer.One
Summary: Starting several hours after the events of the TCW Season 5 finale: Ahsoka helped Anakin fully realize himself. Without her, he suffers trying to find a way forward. [No guarantee of how explicit any of the content will wind up as it progresses, but I prefer not to put a filter my work.)
1. Chapter 1

**CHAPTER ONE**

**OBI-WAN COULD** only remember being scared lifetimes ago, under Qui-Gon. Since then he had engaged darkness face-to-face, submitted to loss, and nearly died in the line of duty on innumerable occasions—all in accordance with the Jedi code. That was his life's work and he understood it would carry onto his final moments, whenever they might be.

There existed one exception to this seemingly inflexible reality: Anakin.

He was so much more than a promising Jedi—in fact, beyond Obi-Wan's preferred admittances, the man was so far from that destiny. His heart was a furnace that set wildfire upon anything that threatened it, a thing that responded to fears in ways that any other Jedi would frown upon. But Obi-Wan couldn't imagine a better galaxy without it. This flaw, though reprehensible it was in the eyes of his order, thrived off of beautiful values: love, passion, empathy—brotherhood. It was the stuff of a good man.

Today, the very fabric of the galaxy conspired to break that heart. Anakin's love worked against him; his passion to carry the light forward in his life, in the lives of others, was burned out; his empathy was rendered all but meaningless by the apathy of those he wanted to trust in.

And his brother failed to stand by him, and by Ahsoka.

Failure. That's what made Obi-Wan recall fear.

* * *

**NO NIGHT ON** Coruscant failed to carry on a certain everlasting density—the weft of millions upon millions of people, the stench of constant industrialization, the shimmer of lights that helped promote this and that . . . That was the machine of Republic civility.

For as long as he could remember, Anakin never stopped seeing it all for the first time. Finding a greater calling, finding freedom, finding progress—this place immortalized those desires for him, for his mother. This was the grand castle that granted significance and conscience. For Anakin this was the heart of hopes and dreams, and he gave everything he could for it.

How he longed for the charming simplicity of the days that came before Christophsis; before Ahsoka. Maybe he was his best self then. Maybe there was no presence strong enough to turn everything he had come to feel and understand about the galaxy and what he did for it on its head—not even Obi-Wan's classic penchant for red-faced criticism.

To say the least, Ahsoka was a . . . stifling reminder of what it was like trying to prove his own worth, trying to live up to a standard that hounded him with every step. He could see that if not for the war and its constant demand for his service in guarding against evil, he would never have been "good enough" for Jedi Knight-status—and at her core she was no different; without him, she wasn't long for a career within the order. So, painstaking though it was, he had taken her under his wing and done his best to drill responsibility, discipline, and discretion into her—and many times, she found a way to turn the lessons back on him in muddied moments. They had a friendship—a concept that Anakin was no stranger to—but they also had so much more, something sacred, something that just made any horizon . . . _brighter_. Despite his long-standing accolades of bravado and courage, they mainly existed to temper a darker side that he couldn't dare to let anyone see—but more often than not, it was having her around that actually helped him work through it. For Anakin, there was no longer a better self that existed without her.

But she walked away, because the castle of hopes and dreams that they fought and bled for together—the one that he vowed to prove his worth to—revealed its gut-wrenching truth: that it wanted nothing to do with what they had. It didn't think twice before turning away from its own, didn't believe in its own foundation, didn't hold a smidgeon of trust. To Anakin, nothing was more insidious.

Oh, so dense Coruscant turned one of the galaxy's most wholehearted men empty.

A hand fell lightly—too lightly—on Anakin's shoulder.

He closed the sight of the Temple steps out of his vision, only to find himself heaving and inhaling the toxic winds wafting about the air.

"Anakin," he heard his master say.

"Don't—" He shrugged him off. "Just don't."

Of all the people he could be having words with, Obi-Wan was on the farthest end of that list. Where was he when Anakin needed him? When she needed him? But still he felt the man like a raincloud, struggling to reconcile his loyalties to Anakin and to his, as Ventress would say, precious Jedi Order.

A light drop of water pattered onto Anakin's hair. It served to disturb faintly.

After a moment of silence: "Please, Anakin—just hear me."

Anakin found himself snapped into a fiery turn to face him. "_Hear you_? So you've finally got something to say, huh? Now that the Council's verdict is set in stone? No thanks to you."

An irritable grimace formed on Obi-Wan's stern features. "It was _her_ decision, Anakin. You know that."

"Maybe because they turned their backs on her! Is this what we are now—too proud to admit when we're at fault, to stand up for our own when they need us more than ever?"

"Any other course of action would've gone against how we are to conduct ourselves. I understand these circumstances have been trying, but—"

"But _what_, Obi-Wan? What excuse would you be making if it had been me?"

That struck deep. Obi-Wan fixed him with a look that expressed so clearly the war that was being waged within. He tried, but he couldn't find an answer.

"Nothing?" Anakin uttered an expectant huff. "What a surprise. Maybe there's only one way to find out."

Holding his master's gaze, he removed his lightsaber from its fixture on his utility belt and tossed it absently. The hilt skittered across the polished ground, landing at the toes of Obi-Wan's boots.

The older man's mouth unhinged in desperation. He eyed the weapon, looked back to its iconic handler.

He espied him walking away.

Obi-Wan was quick to recollect the saber with his left hand. Reaching out with the other as he strode forward, he began to plead. "Wait. Anakin—hold on."

Of course, those words were feeble. His pupil only quickened his pace.

"_Stop!_" he exclaimed, unleashing an unseemly turmoil.

Anakin stopped in his tracks. In this scene, both men were heedless of the distant thunder and quickening rainfall.

"Look at me."

Begrudgingly, Anakin obliged. Obi-Wan without his typical mask—that's what he would respond to. Nothing less was acceptable—not now. As he turned, he looked into the eyes of a man being broken by the idea of failing.

_Failing as what—my master, or my friend?_

"I'm . . ." He was battling tears. "I'm sorry."

"You're sorry?"

"That I couldn't put you first. That I've never been prepared to do it for anyone." Disgrace rolled over Obi-Wan. He resigned himself to looking away, his fingers fumbling for a nonexistent remedy.

The two were monuments of hurt in the splattering night, twenty meters apart. Both eyed the ground between them.

Obi-Wan felt Anakin begin to close the distance between them. His heart raced just as much as his mind did with wonders of what was about to happen, each idea falling apart like shrapnel.

Anakin stood abreast him now, eyeing the side of his inclined head. Leaning lower, he dared to say: "Like Satine?"

Thoughtlessly, Obi-Wan's hand went for a jab at the other man's face. Though reckless the move was, it found its mark, causing its target to stagger back.

—and ever so quickly Obi-Wan was pulled back into reality.

_He_ hit Anakin.

He _hit_ Anakin.

He hit _Anakin_.

Obi-Wan's eyes settled on his shaking hands, wondering just what he'd been reduced to.

The shock was cut short as soon as he felt a metal fist pummel his face, sending him into the black.


	2. Chapter 2

**DREAMS EXIST ONLY TO SELL LIES**

* * *

**. . . NO . . .**

**. . . CAN KNOW . . .**

**. . . KENOBI . . .**

_"MASTER KENOBI!"_

One second carries an explosion of fault and fury and finality and—

The mind-splintering, blunt, resounding jolt of metal suddenly rings out every other sensation.

* * *

**OBI-WAN'S VISION WAS** overlaid by a twisting picture that made for a perfect mirror image: three—no, two blocks of dull color filling a blue canvas. Not a pure blue, but more akin to his remembrances of the almost sickly, dominating tone that permeated his first experiences on Kamino. He was also able to see something dark littering the space between the blocks.

Filtered by something deep and perhaps mechanized: "Master Kenobi, are you alright?"

The words jarred about his auditory sensors, somehow slow and quick to center themselves and lift their muffled distortion.

The hooded beige mask of a Temple guardian came into the foreground of his sight now, seeming to maximize and retract for a moment. "Master Kenobi, can you hear me?"

As his eyes adjusted to the lighting—or lack thereof—he noticed a superficial smatter of blood on the guard's faceplate. But whose?

"Are we . . ." He tried to shake off his disorientation; if it did any good, he wasn't hardly aware. "Where—"

"The formal entrance, Master Kenobi. Of the temple."

_The temple. Of course—where else would I find a _Temple_ guard?_

"Right . . ."

Increasing recognition caused him to begin—shivering?

"We found you drenched in the rainwater," the faceless watcher began to explain, kneeling down to drape a blanket around his shoulders. "You appear to have a slight nasal fracture and a concussion."

_Anakin._

The preceding night came back to him now. His primary impulse was to make inquiries concerning his whereabouts but something compelled him not to, and it wasn't his awareness that asking had never yielded a satisfactory answer before.

"The blood on your mask," he chittered. "I don't suppose it's mine?"

"Yes, Master Kenobi. You woke in shock and—"

"Hit the helmet headfirst. How proper of me."

His mind still rattled with something of a malcontent. His greater senses were nullified, to say the least, scattered and afloat in the water Obi-Wan was trapped under—unwelcome puns notwithstanding.

He didn't feel much like a Jedi.

"We will escort you," the Temple guard said, his statement droned in a way that offered the merits of either a lack in compromise or steadfast provision, or both.

Obi-Wan paid no heed to the other guards that came within his peripheral vision, made no move to reject their nudges in the direction of the Temple; he was focused on the abstract things that greeted him when he woke. They were clearer now: the great Jedi pillars above him confined the sky into a thin line, its color a dying blue that imposed upon the world a fierce nihilism; the sight was adorned with blackened clouds. It was the dusk of uncertainty.

He couldn't remember seeing any world in this light before.

* * *

**"SPACE IS COLD,"** Padmé told Anakin once—and it seemed to be the general truth, especially for a scared child that spent all his prior years scrounging by in a world with a penchant for causing premature aging through the relentless dryness and warmth that its two suns brought. This time, flowing through the glitter-filled blackness that awaited beyond any planet in his _Actis_-class interceptor, Anakin suspected the frigid airs that made him shiver before were warnings against a path that would only serve to poison him from within; this time, as he manually input a destination without R2 present to take care of it, he noticed those airs were snuffed out by an almost sickly gathering of heat within his cockpit.

_33.842823, 7.779038_: the one set of coordinates Anakin swore never to revisit on the one planet he swore never to lay eyes on again.

But he had to go back to his mother's . . . what _was_ his mother's homestead. Every other place he could imagine falling back to was now a prison of indignation and for all the regrets that made his memories of Tatooine, it never caused him to suffer that.

* * *

**HOURS INTO THE** sunless day Obi-Wan lay awake, straining to keep the Coruscant skyline in perspective through the viewport of his privatized med-chamber. The stinging of his nose had prevented him from meditating and achieving a state of clarity like a proper Jedi; he could only dwell on what all had happened so soon.

_So soon,_ he lamented—as though it had always been an inexorable dictate of fate.

He turned to the sound of his chamber doors whirring open. The tall, dark silhouette of Mace Windu strode through the entrance, cutting through the stark overhead lighting; beside him, Ki-Adi-Mundi and the small shriveled figure of Yoda.

At least one among them were one of Anakin's least favorites, Obi-Wan knew.

Mace, ever the preeminent conversationalist among colleagues, was quick to occupy his attention. "Obi-Wan. We noted your absence during our last session in the war room."

_Blast! A war is still on and I might as well have been watching paint dry._

"My sincerest apologies," he mustered. "What has been the latest development?"

"Saleucami," Mundi interjected. "Reconnaissance suggests some of the natives have taken pains to help facilitate a Separatist staging ground."

"A pity the Separatists take such an interest in that quadrant—if not a conundrum, considering how wasteful their recent endeavors have proven."

"We are still pending a fuller geographic survey."

Yoda redirected the discussion, his tone almost grim. "Addressing, this situation requires."

Mace nodded almost robotically. "Indeed. The Temple guards told us of your condition. What happened?"

Obi-Wan's eyes widened. "Last night, after the . . . incident, I went to find—"

"Skywalker." Mace's gaze seemed to turn inward, then to Mundi.

A second of silence filled the room. Obi-Wan would have found the words to break the tension, but he found himself too disturbed by the unspoken quickness of his peers' conclusions. Yoda, of course, had little to offer aside from his usual labored posture.

"Perhaps we've grown too complacent," Mundi finally spoke up. "Striking a Jedi—a Master, no less—warrants due consequence."

"Agreed," Mace said, turning to Obi-Wan again. "Regain your composure, Obi-Wan. Contact us if you see the boy."

The Masters were quick to file out, Mace and Mundi just barely dragging pace for Yoda.

They hadn't even thought to suspect Obi-Wan's responsibility for what happened with Anakin.


End file.
